


Sharing beds like little kids

by still_i_fall



Category: The Ever Afters Series - Shelby Bach
Genre: F/M, This is Bad, after the war, i love myself some lorde, in case you can't tell, just had this prompt thing, literally just wrote around the title, not at all realisic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-20
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2019-05-26 01:27:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14989757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/still_i_fall/pseuds/still_i_fall
Summary: No one really wins wars.-or chase and rory and nightmares about the war





	Sharing beds like little kids

**Author's Note:**

> again title based off lorde song  
> ribs pls do listen
> 
> this is kinda bad and not at all realistic and for that i am sorry

No one ever thinks of the kids after the war. They think of the war itself, the lives lost and the taste of victory. The kids are an afterthought, because they seem fine.

 

Chase Turnleaf isn’t fine, though. He sleeps with a sword by his bed, images of giants plaguing his eyes. Or sometimes, he doesn’t sleep at all, he can’t close his eyes without pictures of Rory’s lifeless body painted on his lids. 

 

He hates it. 

 

Then one night, after a particularly long movie during which they both fall asleep, he doesn’t have the nightmares.

 

And it’s nice to wake up with Rory’s head on his shoulder and his arm wrapped around her waist, even if it comes with a sore back and a tight neck. 

 

Her parents might not like it, him sleeping next to her each night, but they don’t say anything about it. Even they know how hard the war has been on the children, how hard the war has been on everyone. 

 

So maybe people do think of the kids after the war. Maybe parents worry silently (or loudly) and would be willing to do whatever for their children. 

When Chase can't sleep at night because of an imagination that was never a problem before all he has to do is wrap an arm around Rory and it (mostly) all goes away.

 

(It'll never truly be gone though, that's not possible, not after all he's seen)

 

/

 

Rory hates to talk about it. Other people don't need to know about her problems because there's always someone out there that is so much worse off and so much more deserving of sympathy. 

 

So no, Rory doesn't talk about the nightmares.

 

She doesn't talk about watching Lena die in her dreams, or seeing Chase get knocked down and not get back up. She doesn't talk about how sometimes she'll see Hansel or Rapunzel and how they'll tell her all about everything that she did wrong. 

 

And most of all, Rory doesn't talk about all the moments when she'll do something as simple as stand and suddenly she's back on the iceberg and the snow queens pushing her away. 

 

She doesn't talk about any of it. Well, not on her own at least.

 

Chase likes to talk about it, though. He likes to hold her close and listen to her. He likes to whisper about how she saved them all (with his help, of course) and about how she's not the only one plagued by nightmares.

 

And she's not exactly sure when it starts, but at some point it becomes normal for him to spend the night, for her to wake up with a start and for him to be there to comfort her. For her to wake up in the middle of the night because he's afraid she's dead and her being more than happy to prove that she's not. 

 

The kids of the war help one another, and sometimes that's enough.


End file.
